Tips, advice, and blogs by our Typepad community.

Posts from January 2012

It's a new year, so what could be better than to kick it off by becoming a TypePad Champion?

A great way to be show off and become a TypePad Champion is by participating in our Get Satisfaction forum. The forum allows you to share your opinions, tips, and recommendations for blogging with TypePad. Have you done something specatcular on your blog that you're proud of? It might be just the thing that someone else is looking to do. Or you just might have the answer to a question that a fellow blogger is asking.

If you become a Champion, you'll get free time applied to your TypePad account and a Marc Johns SAY Media shirt. What coud be better?

While there are lots of great widgets out there (like the ones from LinkWithin or FeedBurner), sometimes you just want to add something else to your blog. This could be anything from a Twitter or Flickr widget to an image that links to an advertiser's site. You might even want to place Google Adsense ads in your sidebar. It's simple to add all these things and more to your blog using the "Embed your own HTML" widget.

If you have code already for your sidebar, simply go to Design > Content. Select Widgets and then the "Embed your HTML" option and click the "Add this module" button. You would then paste your code into the new pop-up window.

It will look something like this:

Once you've done that and saved your changes, you'll see the code that you added to your sidebar. You can read more about how to do this in our Knowledge Base.

We hope you found this useful! Check back every other week for more "Did You Know?" tips to help make your blog even better!

We're happy to announce a significant new feature based on your feedback and built with a great new partner. Over the past several months, we have been developing, testing and tweaking a new image editing tool with our friends at Aviary. Today we're happy to announce it's ready for public beta. Read on to learn more about this great new addition to Typepad and to find out how you can get immediate access to it.

We've partnered with Aviary to integrate their image editing tools directly in TypePad. After you insert an image into your post, you can double-click on the image to open the Aviary editing tools. You'll be able to crop, rotate, add text, and make a dozen other edits to your images directly from within TypePad.

You can add text directly to your images as shown above. The added text can easily be resized and rotated to fit your image as well.

One of the most requested features is the ability to easily add captions to photos. With the new editor, you can now add captions!

You can also rotate images directly within TypePad. If you frequently use both horizontal and vertical oriented images, you'll find it so much easier to rotate your images to the correct orientation from within TypePad.

Aviary offers fun tools to apply filters to your photos and decorate photos of your pets with hats and mustaches using the stickers tool.

Additionally, the update to TypePad has introduced new changes to the editor that will make it compliant with Internet Explorer 9. When you are using TypePad beta, you won't need to use compatibility mode to make the Rich Text editor work in this browser any longer.

What does beta mean? The new edit image tools are still in beta because we are still developing the feature. With the features in beta, you may run in to some quirks or errors when inserting and editing images. The best way to test a new feature is to allow TypePad bloggers to use it and let us know if you encounter any problems. While we have being trying to break the new features ourselves, in order to resolve any bugs, for the past several months, TypePad bloggers utilize our blogging tools in ways we can't even imagine. Your feedback is what is going to help us to optimize the image editing tools for you.

To try out the new insert image and edit image tools, you can join the TypePad beta team. Go to Account > Summary, check the box next to Join the TypePad Beta Team, and click Save Changes.

You can opt out of TypePad beta any time. Any images added to your post using the new image editing tools will remain the same if you do decide to opt of beta.

Over the past few months we've been looking at how you as TypePad bloggers design your blogs. Via our Featured Blog and the great new Themes we've introduced, we've seen you rock everything from our awesome Pre-Defined themes, to your own tweaks with the Theme Builder, to completely custom designs using Advanced Templates, and it all comes down to one thing: everyone wants a great looking blog. A great design can go a long way in making your blog memorable and gaining return readers, too.

It's been both exciting and inspiring to see how TypePad bloggers embrace blogging, not just in content but in design. To say bravo and let you know how proud we are that you're blogging with TypePad, we've designed some buttons for you to display in your sidebar, and tell the world that you care enough about your blog to craft it with the best. Below, we've included our favorites, designed by the TypePad team.

To add a button to your sidebar, simply copy the code beneath your badge of choice, and paste it into an Embed Your Own HTML module at Design > Content. We've got a step by step tutorial right here!

And before you go, we've got a few questions!

Which of the buttons below is your favorite?

What other styles would you like to see us design in the future?

Would you be interested in designing a button like this for the TypePad community to use? If you do, we'll make it easy for you to add your button right in your TypePad account!

We want you involved, so we'd really love to know what you think. Thanks, and happy blogging!

To customize a Vimeo video, click the Embed option. Under the video preview, select the Customize embed options. If you have a 400px width for the main content column, enter 370px as the width for the video to allow for the default padding. You can also increase the default width if you have a wider column. The height will automatically adjust to be proportional to the height.

After customizing the video embed options, copy the code from the Get the embed code. In TypePad, click the Insert Video option and paste the copied code into the Embed field. Finally, click Insert Video and publish your post.

YouTube offers a similar option to customize the width of your video. From the YouTube video page, click the Share and then Embed. The preferred width can be entered in the Custom box. Then you will copy the code to past in the Insert Video embed field in TypePad.

With YouTube if you don't want to customize the video, you can copy the YouTube video URL and add it to the URL field in the Insert Video pop-up. Please note the shortened youtu.be URL does not work with the Insert Video > URL option. You'll need to grab the full URL (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlWdZhYR3Fw) for the video.

You can use the same Insert Video option to embed videos from other sites, like CNN and Twitvid, as well in your blog. More information on inserting videos is available in the Knowledge Base.

You can also embed videos uploaded directly from your computer into your posts without the need to go through a video hosting site. Instead of using the Insert Video option, you'll first click Insert File to upload the video to your TypePad account. A link to download the video will be added to the post with code similar to:

The above code needs to be altered to display the video within your post instead of a download link. Click to the HTML tab to view the code for the post, and edit the download link to include the embed tags.

Replace xxx for both the height and width elements to set the size of your video. To preview how the video will appear on your blog, click the Preview button. We do not recommend switching back to the Rich Text after editing the video code as the code can be altered.

Here on the TypePad team, we really love our bloggers. Hollywood Housewife is practically a household name around here, as much for her championship of TypePad as for her entertaining, engaging blog posts. She puts a special spin on everything that graces her blog, and gives back to her readers on a regular basis - both fundamentals of stellar blogging, and two good reasons why you should be reading her blog.

Want proof? We've got it. To celebrate her two year anniversary as a TypePad blogger, Hollywood Housewife is giving away one year of TypePad service! To read more about the giveaway, head on over to this post. You (or a friend) might qualify to win!

NAME: Steve MartinBLOG:Steve Martin.comTYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE:WHY WE THINK STEVE MARTIN ROCKS: It's no secret that Steve Martin is an accomplished, storied actor, musician, and author who has delighted millions of people during his tenure on big screen, small screen and stage, and via his novels as well.

The side to Steve Martin that many people may not be familiar with is his position as a TypePad blogger. When you visit SteveMartin.com, you'll be treated to news and reviews, music and liner notes, and information on appearances, tours, and book news as well, all from the man himself. His design team has also done a brilliant job on his blog, whipping up a blog with a personality as big as the man himself.

A couple of weeks ago, we introduced our newest theme, Clean, and we've received great response so far. With modern lines and a great minimalist design, Clean is perfect for displaying large images, handles custom banners beautifully, and features enhanced mobile viewing for folks on the go. Are you a design and coding enthusiast? Customize Clean to your heart's content with our Style Guide.

If you're ready to get Clean, just head to your Dashboard. Then, click to Blogs > Design > Choose a theme. Click on Clean, and you're good to go! Already using Clean? Share your links in the comments!

NAME: Keith JenningsBLOG:KeitharsisTYPEPAD MEMBER SINCE: 2008WHY WE THINK KEITHARSIS ROCKS: Wrapping up our series of posts featuring bloggers' thoughts on the new year is Keitharsis. Essayist Keith Jennings pens an insightful look at resolutions, renewal and the new year, reflecting and encouraging us to look differently at the new year and the resolutions that we make. Read his resolutions post here.

In general, Keitharsis is designed to be a sanctuary for creative writers, featuring missives that encourage his readers to treat our lives and work as portfolios, rather than paths. It's about thinking creatively and staying rooted in what really matters. You won't find "how to" pieces, and you won't read anything that promises to make you rich, but Keitharsis features essays, interviews and exercises on creative thinking, the portfolio life, harmony vs. balance, craft, and community - amongst other things, all in one beautifully written, compelling blog.

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